Word: aback
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Moscow may have been taken aback by the worldwide condemnation of its invasion of Afghanistan, but all its trumpets of propaganda blared denial and defiance. The Afghanistan rebellion had to be suppressed, went the Kremlin line, and so the Soviet army had to suppress it. "To have acted otherwise," said Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev, "would have meant leaving Afghanistan a prey to imperialism." Furthermore, said Brezhnev, Afghanistan was not even the cause of the current crisis. Said he: "If there were no Afghanistan, certain circles in the U.S. and in NATO would have found another pretext to aggravate...